Emily teamed up with community gardener Lorraine to host another 5 sessions of Wintering Well in January and February, offering outdoor companionship and creativity at the Ross of Mull Community Garden.
This year we explored winter light in all its forms. Our first session took a fresh look at seasons, inspired by this book. We started noticing how nature is responding to incremental changes in light and temperature (studying this is known as phenology) and thought about phases of the moon. A chilly start with a cold north wind resulting in numb toes despite hot tea and wrapping up in lots of layers! Each week we were accompanied by an appropriate poem or reflection, and started by reading this one from Nick Welsh: https://iona.org.uk/darkness-and-light/
Week two was about candlelight, we thought about how making simple lamps from rushes dipped in oil would have been a constant household task around here in times past, and had a go ourselves. Later that day the nature club children also tried out beeswax candle dipping. This week we read Jan Sutch Pickard’s Candlemas poem, here’s an extract:
In the dark days
under rain-heavy clouds,
among broken branches,
on sodden earth,
the snowdrops light their candles.
A flame that cannot be put out
by darkness or gales or doubt...
Firelight was the theme of our third session, and we focused on the simple joy of cooking snacks at the firepit – chocolate bread and popcorn! Rosemerry Trommer’s poem In the Bleak Midwinter spoke to us of belonging.
In week four we thought about starlight and made lanterns with holes punched to show glowing constellations, helping us to remember the patterns and look for them in the night sky.
For our final session we took the Ross of Mull Community Transport minibus to Tiroran Community Forest. It was great to hear laughter drifting through the trees as we thought about how low winter sunlight can pick out details otherwise un-noticed, then tried to find as many colours as we could and later created our own collage from old magazines, giving each colour a creative name!
Some of the details we noticed…
Collecting colour samples and transforming them into a collage inspired by Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, used by Charles Darwin and other explorers to help describe the new life forms they were encountering on their travels!
Participants on the walk and enjoying a chat around the fire, John testing out the softness of the moss!
Jan and Emily were both interviewed for this student film about wildlife tourism on Mull. Definitely worth a watch for some great footage of our nature and landscapes, and it highlights how it’s all about finding a balance between the enjoyment of close encounters and minimising disturbance.
Recently we showcased our work through the Scottish Countryside Rangers Association social media channels. Here’s a summary of who we are and what we’re working on this year.
Hi. I am Jan Dunlop and the Ranger Manager for Mull and Iona Ranger Service. My job predominantly covers the north of the island and the islands of Ulva and Gometra.
The beauty of our jobs are that we can plan for our days but something else quite often becomes more of a priority and we have the flexibility to work with this. We are very lucky to have a very wide remit from environmental education for all ages, working with land managers on access type issues, conservation management and in particular helping manage Calgary SSSI and encouraging use of Ardura, our community woodland; and that is just for starters.
Mull is a key spot for wildlife watching and photography, and some of our job is educating about responsible wildlife watching particularly otters, hen harriers and eagles.
Our volunteers and our local communities make our job a real pleasure to do and wouldn’t be possible without them. Working on an island is also very special as are our close work colleagues. Funding for our Ranger service is our biggest challenge and has got increasingly hard over the last 25 years that the ranger service has been in existence, but like mink we are pretty hard to eradicate.
Hi, I’m Emily Wilkins and I work in a partnership ranger role between Mull and Iona Community Trust and National Trust for Scotland. My focus is on the south-west part of Mull (known as the Ross) and the NTS estates of Burg (on Mull), Iona, Staffa and the Treshnish Isles, getting involved in visitor engagement, access work, wildlife monitoring, environmental education and outdoor wellbeing events along with a great team of colleagues and volunteers. At this time of year survey work is a priority, in particular for the rare Slender Scotch Burnet moth and the plants on which it depends. Maintaining good habitat for the moth means finding a balance with grazing cattle, sheep, deer and feral goats, and also involves us in some adventurous bracken clearance on steep slopes! Find out more here: https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/burgs-beautiful-slender-scotch-burnet-moth
Hi I’m May, one of the NTS Seasonal Rangers on Iona, Staffa, and the Treshinish Isles, this is my first season! Our regular job on Iona is on Tuesdays when we run short, guided nature walks for visitors from our visitor shelter. In just 45 minutes we aim to introduce folk to the nature and wildlife on the island, something that doesn’t often get focussed on! We talk a lot on our new conservation farming efforts, including our new flock of Cheviot and Shetland sheep that will be doing some conservation grazing for us. All of this is to aid the fortunes of the elusive Corncrake, a moorhen sized bird that has declined by 70% since the 1970s, partly due to the intensification of farming. Not often seen, Corncrakes have a distinctive call, echoed in their scientific name of Crex crex. Another part of our work on Iona involves population surveys of the Corncrakes which have to be carried out between midnight and 3am as that’s when the calling is most active!
As part of our conservation farming efforts, we have left some meadows ungrazed and unmown, which has led to a wealth of wildflowers growing in them! Primrose, sea campion, meadow cranesbill, spring squill, cuckooflower, heath spotted and northern marsh orchids, yellow flag iris; the list is almost endless. Wildflowers are something we always make an effort to point out on our guided walks and the insects love them! Iona is such an amazing place for the visitors to come and visit and I love showing them around the island!
Hi. I am Peter Skinner, one of the NTS rangers for Staffa, Lunga and Iona for my second summer season.
Staffa has just reopened to visitors after work building a new jetty. The picture shows one of the boats bringing visitors, of which there can be 4 to 5 hundred on a busy day. They come to see the amazing geology, puffins and other wildlife. My job is to greet the visitors, answer lots of questions and ensure the wildlife is respected with so many visitors. We monitor some of the seabirds such as fulmar, shags, gulls and storm petrels. We also record all aspects of nature such as this common blue butterfly.
It is great seeing so many people encounter puffins for the first time. It feels like a privilege to work in such an amazing place, help protect it any enable so many visitors to experience coming here.
The seabird season is in full swing on Lunga with the sound of shag, razorbill, guillemot, puffin and kittiwake chicks filling the air (to name a few!). Before we know it, the birds will be back out to sea for another winter.
Lunga is the largest of the Treshnish Isles, an archipelago in the Inner Hebrides that came into the care of the National Trust for Scotland in 2023. My name is Louise and I am privileged to be a ranger for my third season, sharing these beautiful islands rich in wildlife. Each day brings a variety of tasks like recording sightings, checking wax blocks for the presence of rodents (or hopefully lack of!) and answering thoughtful questions. June is an exciting time on Lunga, bringing lots of lovely visitors and new life, as well as, the Treshnish Isles Auk Ringing Group (TIARG) attending to do the annual counts and tagging of seabirds.
A particular favourite for a lot of people, me included, is watching the moment a puffin brings a beak full of sandeels back to the burrow where a puffling eagerly awaits! If you capture a seabird with fish in its beak you can contribute to ‘Seabirds, camera, action!’ to help Scotland’s seabirds! Find out out more here:
What else have we been up to recently? In the last couple of months we have hosted a royal visit to Ardura Community Forest; worked with our local primary schools on topics ranging from owl pellet dissecting, to adders, slow worms and bees; carried out a seabird census of Iona’s offshore islets; searched for alpine plants and carried out Habitat Impact Assessments high up above Burg’s clifftops; raised awareness about responsible visitor behaviour; run a community garden bioblitz; teamed up with a local geologist for two popular Pebble Picnic events; encouraged volunteers to participate in Buglife’s Riverfly project; hosted Rachel and Reid (the rat-detecting dog) from Biosecurity Scotland – thankfully our seabird islands remain rat-free! Never a dull moment!
Inspired by a project from the University of Glasgow, Emily teamed up with SWMID community gardener Lorraine to run a series of weekly Wintering Well Garden Gatherings throughout January and early February at the Ross of Mull Community Garden in Bunessan.
For anyone who struggles with grey skies and long hours of darkness, it’s important to get outside into the daylight whenever possible. Our events provided a reason to venture outdoors and gather around the firepit for hot drinks, cake, companionship and creativity!
This year, sessions were loosely themed around foods that can support our winter resilience and incorporated an optional nature- or arts-focused activity to help us embrace the season. Unlike last year we were lucky with mainly blue skies although temperatures varied wildly from thick frost or cold winds to still sunny days when we could appreciate apricity (the warmth of the sun in winter). Some participants made the most of the good weather to walk or cycle from home to the garden.
Our first theme was ‘roots’, we munched on a rooty parsnip cake and thought about what might be going on for us that’s not always visible on the surface. Participants took photos to represent how they feel at their worst and best in winter, which were then collated into a gallery to discuss the following week.
The next theme was ‘greens’. We drank sage, rosemary and plantain tea, ate kale and beetroot swiss roll and learned how to prune blackcurrant bushes, taking the cuttings home to place in a vase of water and watch the buds unfurl into leaves. Some of us plan to root them too!
In week 3 the theme was spices, so we enjoyed homemade chai tea and spiced cake. Spices are important in winter as a small pinch can transform something that would otherwise be bland. Our activity was looking at a patch of sky through a frame and choosing three words to describe it, to encourage us to look for the tiny details that can transform our day. Local poet Brian then created this lovely piece from our chosen words.
Medicinal plants were the focus in week 4. Lorraine had created elderberry rob for us to drink, and a low-sugar beetroot cake with dark chocolate. We wove willow into dreamcatchers infused with our hopes and intentions. Willow bark has pain-relieving properties.
The first week of February saw our last gathering for now, when the theme of citrus was celebrated with fresh scones and newly-made marmalade, and an orange and almond cake. Brightly-coloured citrus fruits are great for vitamin C and encourage us to search for the hopeful colours of the coming spring, which we found in hazel catkins, early daffodils and a rainbow amongst the showers.
Thanks to everyone who took part, it was lovely spending time with a different selection of folk each week and we hope these sessions gave you something to smile about this winter!
Enjoy this updated short film about our work. Sourcing funding to keep the ranger service afloat is an ongoing task so if you value what we do and would like to contribute, there is a justgiving page here: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/supportmullandionarangerservice
Back in September our ranger service reached its 25th anniversary, with Jan having been part of it since the beginning. We created this mememto to celebrate her contribution.
The ranger service collaborated with Toben Lewis of Baile Mòr Books for an event this week.
Participants gathered at Ardalanish beach for a clean-up and to search for items that could be recycled into book binding art. Our island coastlines collect a lot of rubbish that washes up from the sea, a sad reminder of how much plastic is thrown away.
Leaving the beach cleaner than we found it.
In the afternoon some of us had a go at making our own books under Toben’s expert tuition. We began to transform a pile of potential materials…
We drilled and cut and stitched, learned the correct way to fold paper and tried a Japanese binding technique. We even included some paper made from seaweed.
Mull & Iona Ranger Service 